Victim in Greg Leon shooting was trying to escape vehicle, says final witness
The prosecution and defense in the murder trial of Mexican restaurateur Greg Leon called their final witnesses Wednesday who gave conflicting opinions about one of the trial’s central questions: the position of victim Arturo Bravo Santos’ body when he was shot inside a Toyota Tundra truck.
Prosecutors say the position of Bravo Santos’ body indicates he was moving away from Leon, who had just opened the truck’s rear passenger side door and saw a naked Santos with Leon’s wife. Outraged, Leon murdered Santos by shooting him as he tried to leave the truck, prosecutors say.
But defense attorneys say Bravo Santos’ wounds support Leon’s claim that he fired in self-defense when he believed Bravo Santos was reaching for a weapon.
Prosecutors have said that Leon, suspicious his wife was having an affair, attached a GPS tracker to her car and followed her to a Lexington County park-and-ride on the night of February 14, 2016. Leon found his wife and Bravo Santos in the backseat of the pickup truck and fired four shots, hitting Bravo Santos three times.
The trajectory of one of these shots is unaccounted for, said crime scene investigator Jamie Johnson. She was the only witness called by 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard after the defense rested its case Wednesday. Johnson was the 23rd witness called on the seventh full day of testimony in the Lexington County Courthouse.
Johnson, who testified earlier in the trial, was brought in to reestablish the prosecution’s narrative. Relying on a crime scene reconstruction she conducted in 2018 that focused on bullet trajectories, along with surveillance footage of the shooting, Johnson argued that Bravo Santos could not have been leaning towards the center console as the defense has suggested. Leon testified that he believed that the younger man was reaching for a weapon.
Instead, “As he (Bravo Santos) is getting shot he is moving towards his left side... as if he is exiting the vehicle,” Johnson said.
A bullet ricochet on the rear driver’s side window indicated that the door was open to almost 90 degrees when the bullet passed through Bravo Santos’ chest. The bullet then lodged inside the door, Johnson said.
“If the door had been shut the glass would have shattered,” said Johnson.
In surveillance footage, Bravo Santos never appears in a narrow patch of light illuminating the front seats of the truck. The rear driver’s side door can be seen to open an instant before a muzzle flash can be seen inside the truck, Johnson showed the jury.
But under cross examination by defense attorney Jack Swerling, Johnson admitted she could only account for the trajectories of three of the four bullets fired that night. Her theory about the bullet striking the rear door window also required that Leon’s wife, Rachel, not be in between Bravo Santos and the car door when the nonfatal gunshot passed through his chest.
“If she was sitting next to the door then your whole premise is incorrect,” Swerling said, pointing out that Johnson had no information about where Rachel was positioned in the car. No evidence presented during the trial has confirmed where Rachel Leon was sitting inside the car at the time of the shooting.
Johnson also stated that she did not know whether Bravo Santos was reaching for anything.
But whether Bravo Santos appeared to be reaching for something is central to the defense’s case. Leon has said he shot the 28-year-old construction worker after Bravo Santos threatened to kill Leon. Bravo Santos leaned forward and raised his right arm as if he was reaching for a weapon, Leon said..
The defense’s final witness, Dr. James Fulcher, the medical examiner for Volusia County, Florida, gave vital support to this argument Wednesday.
Swerling and fellow defense attorney Alissa Wilson asked Fulcher to testify after Newberry pathologist Dr. Janice Ross, undercut a key pillar of the defense’s argument.
Ross, who performed Bravo Santos’ autopsy, initially determined that Bravo Santos’ right arm was raised when he was shot. But on the witness stand in the trial’s first week, she changed her ruling, saying that a rectangular bruise she earlier identified on the inside of Bravo Santos’ right arm was actually a “slap wound,” indicating that the arm was down by his side when a bullet passed through his armpit.
While agreeing that the bruise was present, Fulcher disputed Ross’ interpretation. “I would expect it to be described as a graze wound, a laceration if the arm was down and touching,” Fulcher said. The fact that it was only a bruise meant that if it was a slap wound, Bravo Santos’ arm was “advanced,” as if he was reaching forward, Fulcher said.
But the rectangular shape of the injury made it more likely that it was caused by Bravo Santos “flopping” out of the back seat of the car and hitting his arm on the edge of the door handle or car door, Fulcher said. Bravo Santos’ body was found on the ground next to his truck, naked expect for his socks.
Closing arguments in the case are set to begin at 9:30 on Thursday morning. The jury, comprising of seven women, five men and two alternates will then receive charging instructions by Judge Walton J McLeod, IV.
This story was originally published July 5, 2023 at 9:30 PM.